Love Me When I'm Gone: The true story of life, love and loss for a Green Beret in post-9/11 war

by Robert Patrick Lewis

Love Me When I’m Gone is a tale for the ages, the perfect blend of action, romance, heroes, villains, patriotism and valor. What holds this story above all others is the fact that this one is true.

Rob had a pretty rough childhood: given up for adoption as an infant, brought into a family of highly decorated military men, suffering the loss of his mother to cancer, and his rebellion which landed him in military school. When he finally returns home he meets Cindy, who quickly becomes his best friend. After graduation the two go off to college at opposite ends of Texas, and their paths separate.

Eight years later, when Rob returns home from SERE school and being a POW in the cold North Carolina woods, he wakes up one morning to discover that Cindy has contacted him on Myspace; he is very surprised, as he has been searching for Cindy for the past few years to no avail. The two reunite to spend his month of leave together, both knowing at the end he will be leaving for the illustrious 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), the elite Battalion of Green Berets stationed in Germany for quick-reaction missions around the globe. The two share a heart-felt goodbye at the airport, each hoping that somehow they can find a way to keep their love alive throughout whatever the future has in store for this newly crowned Green Beret.

Rob’s time in Germany is a whirlwind; his first trip to Iraq, in which he encounters three distinct situations which will haunt him for the rest of his life, HAVE-ACE, the Special Operations school which he attends with his team and finally becomes one of them, Africa, where Rob learns many valuable lessons about life, and Afghanistan, where he and his team are tested in many life-or-death situations, including Operation Payback, where he and The Captain are wounded in a sustained firefight in the middle of a village.

The culmination of the story is the quintessential fairy-tale ending; Rob moves back to California to spend the rest of his days, and the final chapter is the full military wedding, complete with his teammates as groomsman and sword bearers.

Genres: Military Fiction, Love, War

334 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 9, 2012

About the author

Robert Patrick Lewis grew up in Kingwood, Texas. After graduation from high school he attended Texas State University to pursue a Marketing degree.

Shortly after September 11th, 2001 he enlisted in the Army’s Delayed Entry program which allowed him to finish out his college degree, and a few weeks after graduation he left for Infantry Basic Training at Ft. Benning, GA. Initially intended to be an Army Ranger, he was accepted into the 18 X-ray program, which sent him directly to Special Forces Assessment and Selection after attending Airborne school.

Selected as an 18 Delta (Special Forces Medic) he spent two additional years at Ft. Bragg training to be a Green Beret. After graduation from the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Stuttgart, Germany.

While assigned to B/1/10 he was an operator on Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) 022 and was deployed to Iraq, Africa, and Afghanistan, amongst numerous other training deployments around the US and Europe.

After completing his two-year tour in Germany he was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) located in Colorado. He was immediately deployed to Iraq after his arrival, and left active duty shortly after his return from Iraq in 2009.

At the end of his time in the Army his medals included the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, NATO non-article 5 medal, two Army Commendation Medals, Special Forces Tab, Combat Infantry Badge, Airborne wings, Iraq Campaign Medal with star, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and many ribbons for his exploits with the Army.

He writes from his homes in Southern California and Dallas, recently finished his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, writes as a contributor to Heroes Media Group & The Santa Clarita Gazette and is developing The Pact Trilogy into a television series.

His published books include his military memoir “Love Me When I’m Gone: the true story of life, love and loss for a Green Beret in post-9/11 war,” “The Pact” and "The Pact Book II: Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Reviews

[Robert Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a bit biased, but I loved it, all 1,000,000+ times I read it!!!

[Jamie E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why I'm reading this book: I heard the author interviewed on a podcast and was intrigued.
Author's disclaimer (from the podcast - I'm paraphrasing): I took the book to a publisher and he told me to cut it from 250k words to 100k words and get a ghostwriter. I told the publisher no, that I wanted it to be in my words. So I self published via Amazon (yay, Amazon!).
My thoughts 15 pages into the book: engrossing story, but it DESPERATELY needs some editing.

My thoughts 200 pages into the book: incredibly engrossing story, but DESPERATELY DESPERATELY needs some editing. I know the author was concerned about losing his point of view by turning it over to an editor, but simple things like transitions and sentence/paragraph structure, the glossary, etc., could all benefit from a professional eye. Some minor tweaks could REALLY enhance this book.
I understand that the author did the reading for the audio book. I'd be willing to bet it's pretty good (he has a good voice), particularly if weird (or no) editing bothers you when reading a book. I imagine it will "tell" better than it reads.
Still, it's an amazing story and I'm glad I'm reading it.

Finished the book, and I'm sticking with my original assessment: amazing, engrossing, phenomenal story that really needs some editing. My rating is on content alone, so take that into consideration if editing is an issue for you.

[Dave Edmiston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time that I've heard a veteran interviewed on Adam Carolla's podcast to plug his book. Both times the authors turned out to be some of the best guests I've ever heard. The first was Sean Parnell, author of Outlaw Platoon. And just like Sean Parnell, Rob Lewis turned out to be one of the nicest, most sincere, and most interesting guests to listen to. And again, just like with the previous guest's book, Love Me When I'm Gone turned out to be an amazing story.

Rob Lewis tells his story beginning as a high school student who is kind of a screw-up. He meets a nice girl in his Spanish class and eventually falls in love with her. His love for her turns out to be an ongoing thread through the whole story.

What makes his story uniquely interesting to me compared to other accounts from Afghanistan is his medical experience. As a Special Forces "18D", he is the medical specialist for his team. With his expertise, he is also often called on to deliver medical clinics to the locals where he was deployed. These clinics were a sign of good faith to the locals, intended to win over their goodwill.

I don't want to tell too much of his story; you should read it for yourself.

Lewis's story is intense and hard to read at times. I admit that my eyes leaked more than once. I don't know if he had professional help to write his story or if he wrote this himself. All I know is that the writing was really well done. He did a great job moving the story along and teasing a couple of different topics. I definitely couldn't put it down.

I am constantly amazed to know that men like Lewis have committed to put their lives at risk to protect our country against its enemies. Reading stories like his is as close as I'll ever come to understanding what's really happening in these wars. But as long as there are men and women like him putting their lives on the line, the least the rest of us can do is read their stories and give them our unending support.

Thank you, Rob Lewis for your service and your sacrifice. Thank you for taking a bullet to protect my country. I hope we deserve it.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of 2012 was actually a manuscript of a novel slated for a 2013 release, but this military stunner made it to press before the holiday and studios are already talking about a film.

"In Love Me When I’m Gone," retired Special Forces officer, Staff Sergeant, (SSG) Robert Patrick Lewis offers readers a golden ticket inside the exclusive world of U.S. Special Forces training and operations, and the tightly-knit web of brothers—Renaissance men with unequalled skill sets, operating in the most dangerous places and situations on earth.

This is not a sugar and spice tale. It’s a boots-on-the-ground, blood-sweat-and-tears soldier story, told with a soldier’s tongue in authentic soldiers’ speak delivered with occasional profanity and frequent military acronyms that draw readers into this elite society of brothers. Lewis’s dialogue conveys the urgency, pain, and frustration of war. It is a hard read emotionally, because most readers will have a face slap of recognition that we are too removed from the men and women defending our rights and privileges.

Lewis offers biographical glimpse behind the camouflage, beginning with the circumstances and events that set him on the road to military service. Put up for adoption at birth, he considers himself twice blessed to have had birth parents who allowed him the chance to be raised in a nurturing, adopted family with a deep military tradition. His father left the Navy and tied his hopes to a newly formed airline called Southwest, which Lewis regards as a second family. Despite all this support, Lewis lost his bearings following the cancer death of his mother. To rein his flailing son in, his father enrolled him in a military academy whose structure and rules put Lewis back on course.

Lewis returned to public school his Sophomore year and met a charming Asian coed named Cindy Chiu who secretly won his heart. After graduation, the two went their separate ways with only brief interactions, and then they lost contact for several years. Lewis was headed for a degree in business when 9/11 happened, and he chose to enlist in the Army in the hopes of becoming an Army Ranger. In Lewis’s own words:

"At my fathers urging I enlisted in the delayed entry program, which would allow me to finish out my college degree before leaving for Infantry basic training (boot camp). Less than a month after I walked across the stage and took my diploma from Texas State University in 2003, I was on a plane to Ft. Benning, Georgia to learn how to be an Infantryman, then off to Airborne school, then to Ft. Bragg, NC for Special Operations Prep and Conditioning (SOPC, the first of many weed-out courses designed to convince the weak to leave of their own accord), followed by Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) and the beginning of my two years in the Special Forces Qualification Course (the SFQC or, more commonly, the Q-course), being assessed and tested every single day on whether or not I had what it took to serve my country as a Green Beret."

Lewis is quick to point out the sacrifice families make when a soldier chooses the military as their vocation. After years of no contact, Cindy Chiu found him through social media, and she became his anchor, the person he dreamed of coming home to, the woman with whom he dreamed of building a future. Love Me When I’m Gone highlights the emotional toll separation and secrecy take on these Special Forces’ loved ones.

"I still remember the day that I got her first message on MySpace; I returned from SERE school the day before, and was still bruised, battered, emotionally scarred and emaciated from spending a month as a POW in the North Carolina woods. SERE is the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape portion of the Q-course, and it was the very last part of my two-year journey of proving that I had what it took to wear the coveted Green Beret.

"Both of my roommates were 18B’s, weapons specialists, Green Berets who can identify, fix, rebuild, and operate any weapon in use anywhere in the world, had been finished with the Q-course for several months. I had been selected as an 18 Delta, Special Forces Medic, which, while it is one of the most coveted positions in all of Special Operations, adds a full year of medical training, testing, and hospital rotations to your duration in the Q-course.

"As luck would have it, she had been searching for me all along as well. Her first email to me was about three pages long, and after a week of exchanging messages on MySpace we graduated to all night phone calls. It was just like we were teenagers again, and night after night I would stay on the phone until just hours before I had to get up to go to work, and I was constantly operating on just a few hours of sleep.

"It was only a few weeks later that my orders finally came down: I was being assigned to the elite 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, with the first unit of Green Berets that had ever existed. It was the most bittersweet news I ever received; I had been hoping and praying throughout my entire time in the Q-course that I would get this assignment to Germany, where my Grandfather had been stationed after WWII and my father had spent his formative childhood years, but now that Cindy and I found each other again it meant that our paths would once again separate.
I could hear the disappointment in her voice the day that I told her, and it made my heart sink."

Lewis takes readers right into this specialized world. It’s not all bullets and blood. Readers feel the toll inertia takes on warriors who are far from home, living in a state of readiness, but like race horses in the gate, tense as headlines and orders collide, delaying their release and insertion into battle. They fill the days with more training, repeating skills until actions are so instinctive they are, as Lewis calls them, “muscle memory.”

I was most impressed by the humanitarian work performed by these specialized peacekeepers, particularly by Special Forces medics like Lewis, who set up clinics to treat citizens in remote outposts, laboring to win the hearts and minds of people. Says Lewis in "Love Me When I'm Gone," “If you take care of a man, he will fight for you; take care of his family, and he will die for you."

"Love Me When I’m Gone" runs the full spectrum of emotions. I cheered, felt my stomach knot, cried, and in truth, felt guilty that I was so unaware of the price soldiers and their families were paying for me, and for you. The combat scenes insert readers into the human drama, and the drama is intense. You understand in a new way how an individual can love another so much that he would take a bullet to save a friend. Again, in Lewis’s words:

"It is something that cannot be explained or even understood until you’ve lived it; a man can’t know or fully appreciate his life until he’s been close enough to taste the end of it, and the bonds forged in battle are some of the strongest a man could ever have. We are brothers, the men of ODA 022, and though we didn’t have the same blood running through our veins, we had all shed the blood of others together, and knew that none of us would hesitate to step in the way of fate and take a round or jump on a grenade to save one another."

After leaving Special Forces, Lewis began writing down his experiences to help fill in the gaps for Cindy, and to record them for his children. He consulted with his comrades to make sure he was getting the details and places right, and they were so moved by the project they encouraged him to turn it into a book so the misconceptions about Special Forces soldiers would be cleared up, and so people would simply understand what they were doing on that invisible line. It took time to get the manuscript approved by the Pentagon, and now that the book is out, Lewis’s main hope is two-fold: to provide strength to military spouses and families who suffer high divorce rates, and to support Veteran's charities like USA Cares (for which Lewis is a national spokesman) and The Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

"Love Me When I’m Gone," should be read by every American adult. Lewis cleaned up the language to make it a read parents could share with their teens with some prior editing. Will it jar your sensibilities? You bet. Will it change you? I hope so. We owe an incalculable debt to these heroes and their families, and understanding their sacrifice is a first step to repaying it.

[Christian D. D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all.

Contrary to "Rambo" and Hollywood's other depictions of Green Berets as near-superhumans and mindless killing machines, books by REAL Army Special Forces types like Robert Patrick Lewis' excellent "Love Me When I'm Gone" show that while Green Berets are extraordinary warriors ans extraordinary human beings, they are still just that, human beings, with emotions, imperfections, and same basic human needs for love, acceptance, etc, as the rest of the human race.

A very readable and engaging first-hand account of triumph and tragedy, military humor, camraderie (something that's indescribable to someone who'snever served in the military or any other high-risk profession), international combat action & adventure, triumph, tragic loss, and true love lost and then re-gained for good. SSG Lewis also has some insightful observations on the places he's been, such as the state of poverty and corruption in Africa, and the short-sightedness and political stupidity of the senior officers running the show in Afghanistan (for example,the Group Commander who arbitrarily order Robert's team to cut their long hairs & beards,when they'd already been authorized "modified grooming standards" in order to blend in better with the local populace and gain credibility with said populace).

Best of all, part of the proceeds from the sale of the book go toward a worthy cause, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

[Cindy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down. A good understanding of what our troops and their loved ones go through. Couldn't make it through the book without tearing up several times. Great and inspirational writing- I HIGHLY recommend this book! :)

[Lynn Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never dreamed I would like this book so. It's the second war story I've ever read. The first was "Bridge on the River Kwai," required reading in high school. This was also an "obligation read" because I met the author's wife at the VA, opened my big yap and told her I would read it.

Amazing Grace. I devoured it, a very interesting tale of the very real life of today's military. Who knew so much behind the scenes intrigue underlies so much banality? Or maybe it was Lewis's story-telling skill that had me absorbing every word? Shockingly good read.

Somebody give this guy a writing deal.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't wait for the next book! I would recommend this book to any buddy who loves a good read! I have a new found respect to the dedication, sacrifice & patriotism in your beliefs. The one thing that Stuck out was the tight bond of brotherhood and comradely you have for one another. One would be lucky to find that in their life.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be quite an enjoyable read. Really well written for what I assume is the authors first book and I look forward to seeing more from him.

[William Stasny jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book about the often private lives of special forces

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, I am very glad I read this book after hearing the author on the Adam Carolla podcast. I hope this book becomes very popular as it is riveting record of a green beret from training through combat. I work for a defense contractor who supplies radios to the special forces so I have great respect for them and what they do. This book did a great job of showing what great men and heroes these guys are. It was also great to hear a PSC-5 mentioned in a book.

[Riley H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any one who wants to become a part of the elite Special Forces will greatly appreciate this book. SGT Robert Lewis tells about his time as an 18D and it will damn near put you there. This book is incredibly inspiring, especially for SF aspirants. Other reviews prove that the book is great for anyone really. I recommend it 100%.

[Cherry May · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice

[Craig D Orzel, Sr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome home

I truly enjoyed this book and am happy you made it home. I highly recommend this well written life story that shows that we still have patriots serving our country. Welcome home!